Preservation efforts

The Preservation of records, cultural artifacts, laws, religious doctrines, historically significant documents, as well as simple notes, letters and diary entries are what we build on as a society to know our past, deal with our present and plan for our future. Today, our lives are flooded with information both new and old. Preservation today is a balance of caring for old documents, organizing new forms of information and keeping information accessible through preservation efforts. Rubin (2004) states that, "in an age in which there is great emphasis on new knowledge in electronic form, Preservation strategies remain critical if both important artifacts and intellectual content of items of the past are to survive." (p368) The Preservation of print materials begins with properly caring for materials while they are still new. Other measures to preserve paper documents includes buying materials on acid-free paper, maintaining proper humidity and temperature and using repair measures like re-binding and mending. Electronic sources of information have caused a series of new preservation issues and questions. One major issue facing preservation today is digitization, which is the main focus of this blog. Lester & Koehler (2007) explain that digital materials, unlike paper documents, require complex hardware and software in order to retrieve and interpret them. In many studies that have been carried out on the use of digital technology as a preservation technique, one question has been raised repeatedly, “Can we be assured that information stored digitally will be accessible in the future?” The answer currently is no. However, organizations including Stanford University, Google and The Library of Congress have projects in the works attempting to preserve digital collections. The LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) is digital preservation software created by Stanford University. “LOCKSS preserves digital content in a library-to-library network, just as multiple libraries keep copies of the same book” (Schneider, 2007) The Google Books Project is digitizing existing print materials in a digital library collection open to the public. The European Digital Library includes more than 40 European national and other libraries in a project to digitize their documents. (Lester & Koehler, 2007, p105)
Kuny, T. (1997). “A digital dark ages? Challenges in the preservation of electronic information.” 63rd IFLA Council and General Conference.
Lester, J. & Koehler, W.C. (2007). Fundamentals of Information Studies. Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.: NY.
Rubin, R. (2004). Foundations of Library and Information Science. (2nd ed). Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.: NY.
Schneider, K. (2007). “Lots of librarians can keep stuff safe.” Library Journal 132(13) p30-31

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Conservation Lab

I have mentioned here and there that I did an internship at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in the Conservation Lab, but I have not had a chance to summarize some of the hands on preservation experience that I got while working there. According the the Conservation Book Repair: A Training Manual by Bonadea, one of the most important aspects of conservation is deciding what books to repair. Unlike most libraries, the ALPLM has an extensive budget for preservation work. Because of this they have state-of-the-art equipment, a full-time staff dedicated to preservation and a willingness to repair and restore any document that may need it. The workload for this department is never ending. The various other departments of the library and museum send items to the conservation lab for repairs as they are needed. Items for display, for use in the museum or reference materials that get frequent use take top priority.

Some of the most common repairs that I was able to participate in include:

Rips & Tears- Rips and tears are usually mended with Japanese repair tissue or with heat set tissue that is activated by a hot iron. (I got to do this all by myself)

Loose binding- To do this I used a long knitting needle and dipped it in PVA, (Polyvinyl Acetate) an adhesive, and then slid the needle down the loose inner hinge , while pushing the inside flap with a tool called a folder. Then the book sits in a press until the PVA has dried and it is as good as new.

Loose pages- If a page has fallen out of the book, you glue (PVA) a strip of repair tissue to the edge of the page. Once that is attached, you will "tip in" the page by brushing the adhesive to the strip and gluing it in place. Tissue paper is set inside so that glue doesn't stick to the neighboring pages. Then the book sits on a press to dry.

Boxing- Often books have deteriorated to the point that repair is not totally possible and they cannot be shelved. To remedy this situation a box can be made to fit the book perfectly and will house it on the shelf and protect it from further damage. I was able to make a box, but not on my own. This task involves measuring and mathematical equations to produce a box that fits each individual book like a glove.

These are some of the things that I got hands-on experience with, but there are many more preservation procedures that are much more complicated like sewing bindings, fixing covers, etc. Conservation Book Repair: A Training Manual is available online in full at http://www.library.state.ad.us/hist/hist_does/conman/conman.pdf it is a really great resource.

BonaDea, A. (1995). Conservation Book Repair: A Training Manual. Alaska Department of Education: Juneau, Alaska.

This is a really interesting article on the Dance Heritage Coalition that shows the depth of digital preservation and the variety of information that we as a society give importance to and therefore want to preserve. The article states:

"Videotape has become the archival storage medium for dancers and choreographers and popular belief within this community has always been that information stored on magnetic media is permanent. Magnetic tape has provided a medium to record and replay our dance history at will, but magnetic media have a very limited life span and playback machines quickly become obsolete. As a result, irreplaceable tapes are in peril and the probability is real of losing forever many of the moving images that have become the collective memory of all forms of dance. The emergency is especially critical within major institutions and repositories, including all of the Coalition member institutions, where rapidly deteriorating videotapes represent a major part of many archival collections. (For example, the New York Public Library, Dance Division estimates that it holds approximately 40,000 videotapes, representing virtually every type of dance practiced throughout the world.)
With this crisis in mind, the Dance Heritage Coalition has closely monitored the development of digital technology throughout the past few years. In a report to the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1997, the Coalition identified a critical need for the preservation of moving image and audio materials, particularly for dance recorded on videotape. A Technical Advisory Group was created in 1998 to guide and inform the Coalition in these matters. Drawing upon professional expertise in moving image video migration, the group proposed using dance as a model to address the complex issues surrounding the preservation of magnetic media.
Therefore, with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Coalition called a meeting in July 2002 to design an experiment to determine the most appropriate method of transferring analog videotapes to digital for preservation purposes and using a variety of dance videotapes as the testing focus. In the case of dance videotapes, the digitization process will not only conserve the original object but will reduce the further deterioration of and provide access to rare, fragile, and vulnerable materials. By setting preservation standards, the outcomes expected from this project will have enormous resonance not only for the dance community, but for every major archival institution."

You can read more about the Dance Heritage Coalition at http://www.danceheritage.org/publications/dance_video_risks.html